1. Field of the Invention
The instant invention relates to a method of inflecting words, and more specifically to a word inflection method and to a data processing unit suitable for performing such a method.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
A method and data processing unit for word inflection are known from U.S. Pat. No. 4,724,523. The method described therein has the object, inter alia, of providing efficient storage of digital signals representing linguistic data by the use of inflection routines. As a result, it is no longer necessary to store all the inflected words in a memory, and the technical effect of this is that there is a considerable savings in memory space. However, such a system is not without its disadvantages. A first disadvantage of the inflection routines described is that these routines require frequent access to a mass storage system, and this results in a considerable decline in performance. A second disadvantage is that the linguistic data relating to inflection categories is spread over various memory segments, with the result that it is a difficult process to make inflection routines suitable for a different language.